You Bet Your Life - 1947-1949
Groucho Marx - You Bet Your Life A collection of episodes from the first two radio seasons. First the "Pilot" or "Audition show", presumably recorded at CBS (There's a "Columbia Broadcasting System" announcement at the end), maybe never broadcast. When I first got this episode about 20 years ago it circulated as "Pilot, 1947" but has since acquired the date of 15th September 1947 which may be correct but I can't verify it. It was also edited and lasted 15 minutes. This is the full 30 minute version. The first season ran on ABC (so it changed networks after the pilot!) from 27th October 1947 to 22nd December (Monday), then changed day to a Wednesday from 31st December 1947 until 21st April 1948. (One source says the final episode of the season was not on 21st April but on 26th April. In the 14th April episode it says the next episode will be on "next wednesday" so either the episode was pre-empted at the last moment and rescheduled for a few days later, or it's a typo.) The second season ran from (Wednesday) 29th September 1948 until 25th May 1949. I've also included the 23rd Feb 1949 episode as it belongs with this set. It's a low quality version that's been around for years but unfortunately I don't have a better version of it. Notes: The 22nd Dec 47 episode has circulated as 24th Dec but that is incorrect. As evidence, there's the comment of "Just tuesday & wednesday are left for Christmas shopping", as well as "Starting next week Groucho Marx will be heard on wednesday night just before Bing Crosby". At least three other episodes are known to exist (I don't have them) from the first 2 seasons... - A 46 minute unedited episode recorded 2nd December 1947 (the edited broadcast version would have been 8th December 1947). - 23rd March 1949. But you can hear the unedited version of that episode as well as some others from that season here: http://archive.org/details/YouBetYourLifeunedited - 18th May 1949 And don't take that as a definitive list of what episodes exist, it's only the ones I'm aware of. Hopefully there's others.
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.